or you could just challange me on what I said, and not just write it off as "wam talking shite again"
Your wish is my command. Although in this instance I'll be hard pressed to perform the function stated without reaching the offending conclusion.
to be fair some of this was carry on from the "New Charlie Brooker Show on C4" thread.
A completely unrelated discussion.
However good serialised TV does not work up to pointless cliff hangers, in the final 5 minutes, and then spend the first 15 minutes of the next episode working the way them (or at least not make it seems that, that is what has happened)
I'd agree to an extent, that bad serials often fall into the trap of building up to absurd cliffhangers in an attempt to rigidly stick to the format.
But cliffhangers/closing revelations, whether bombastic, low key, conceptual or perilous, are quite necessary if you're telling one homogeneous story in multiple parts. Each episode has to have a beginning, middle and end - they are acts in a bigger story, and have to be structured as such, otherwise they may as well have written a 5 hour movie and callously cut it into chunks without any thought toward dramatic structure.
Try watching 30 minutes of Ben Hur once a day. Wouldn't that be frustrating? Children of Earth is written for the format, as it should be.
good serialised TV should give you enough across the first 60 minutes to keep you watching, I actually felt Torchwood had given me that, I just didnt feel that unless what happened in episode 2 had some effect in future episode, it felt like not alot happened and time was wasted.
Well we don't know what happens in the remaining 3 hours, so... I think you're jumping the gun a bit.
Quite a bit happened in episode 2, actually. The core character's world was shattered (literally) in the first part, introducing the necessary conflict and peril that's needed to carry the (so far secondary) story of alien invasion. The second part was spent getting the bruised and battered team back together, and finding out just how deep a shit they were in.
There were hints as to the nature of the (again, so far secondary) antagonist. I could go on, but it seems to me that quite a bit happened to propel the story, and get the characters where they needed to be.
I can't fathom how this was time "wasted", unless you think that Lord of the Rings should have been a 5 minute short:
Hobbits wake up in the shire, fade to black.
Fade up, Frodo casts ring into lava pit.
Everyone has a cuddle. Something about Elves on a boat.
The end.
I thought this was a poor example of serialised TV, which is a shame as I would have watched episode 2, without the big cliffhanger and the promise of the "how can we kill or contain Jack, when most viewers know that there is a very good chance he will be free at the end of the next episode" what were they going to do, have 2 of 5 episodes where Jack is not really around?
I would say it's a pretty by the numbers piece of serialised TV (so far), but I don't mean that in a bad way and I can't fault the overall execution (accepting that we're only two episodes in and there's 3 hours worth of room to fail yet).
Don't take your point about us all knowing the outcome, either. We all know that Torchwood will save the day in the end. It's the journey that matters, again, it's in the execution. That's like watching Tennant's final two parter and saying "well, that was a waste of time - we all knew he'd change into Matt Smith by the end!".
and you can disagree with me, without saying that my opinions are "shite"
That was a different thread, keep up. And frankly, why not?
